How will the Royal Family end?

[JoyousGreyOrca]

The Royal Family will end. Not yet obviously. But within the next generation.

People often assume institutions like this fall slowly and gradually. We see a bit of that already happening with the reduction in "working" Royals, far less favourable poll results than when Queen Elizabeth reigned, and the willingness of the media to be more critical of the Royal Family.

I have seen people commenting assuming this means the Royal family will end soon. I think they misunderstand what is happening.

But society is changing and the deference that Queen Elizabeth attracted can no longer be taken for granted. Colonies are no longer happy for the Royals to carry out cosplay colonial tours on their soil, and increasingly they will remove the King as their Head of State. But I think when the end comes it will be sudden and unexpected. Similar to the fall of the Soviet Union. A clear weakening of the institution, but then a sudden, and shocking fall.

The aftermath will be very messy though as the Royal family try and fight for as much of the states wealth as they can, using the courts if they need to.

I’m sorry you feel your post on Christianity was ignored @JoyousGreyOrca but take heart - it has only been a couple of hours! Do spare a thought for dappled whose helpful contribution to you has been left on read for over a day!

Well it would hardly be more complicated than the Royal Family’s finances as they currently stand could it?

Running commercial enterprises with special tax rates leasing out land to the army and the NHS among others?

Giving that money to the state then the state giving them back a portion?

It’s massively over complicated if you ask me!

No one is asking why the Crown Estates need to be so vast in the first place?

As far as I understand it, King Charles has taken on ownership not only of the late Queen Mother’s properties, but also the late Queen Elizabeth’s properties too?

Is it right that a King grows richer and richer by millions of pounds by simply remaining in his position as Head of State and benefiting from favourable inheritance laws?

A President presumably would not be allowed to do that?

That’s interesting CathyorClaire

And I am interested in your take on this too
JoyousGreyOrca

I wasn’t ignoring the issue of William and Christianity, I definitely think it presents a problem, but I don’t think it will be the thing that brings down the monarchy, because William’s view is probably aligned to those of the British public.

Also, I know someone on the Synod and they are totally disenchanted with the C of E too! 😀So William is not out of step because the Church of England is similarly divided on various issues. And the division is serious.

Also, congregations are diminishing, church attendance among the general populace is diminishing; so by the time Wills gets to be King, it will probably be less of an issue and the Church can be dis-established.

Personally as a Republican, I don’t quite understand how you can separate the history of the C of E from Kings but there you go!

@derxa by the way, you called someone a fool lower down in the thread for holding a certain opinion. And now you are calling someone’s posts tiresome.

Everyone is entitled to express an opinion without being insulted.

Why do you feel it necessary to be so rude?

@JoyousGreyOrca - So I believe Charles is an ordinary member of the Church of Scotland not Head / Supreme Governor yet he is still King of Scotland . If I'm honest I am not sure a decline in practising Christians in the country will have as much impact as you think.

But if you are interested in Church and State you might want to follow this
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3539 . A private Members bill being put forward by a Lib Dem Peer . I have read it does not have Govt support.

I've given it my best shot 😁

I think separating the Church of England and the State would be of benefit to both. I don't think it will affect the Royal family at all, except for removing an archaic title that didn't make sense at the time it was bestowed let alone now.

Pretty Harry is still in the line of succession, no?

The CoE is a huge mess at the moment - I’d be interested to know what William’s feelings were about faith in general, as well as having an organised Protestant religion underpinning the nation in present day.

Charles was very open about wanting to be a defender of all faiths.

Prince Philip was known to be fascinated by issues within his own faith. Although I don’t know if that was more of an intellectual interest than religious.

The Crown Estates are just historically vast but they don’t belong to the monarch they belong to us. It’s actually one of my main reasons for supporting the status quo of a constitutional monarchy because the one of the duties of the monarch is to act as a steward for the Crown estates and help protect them for future generations. I have less faith that politicians wouldn’t just find ways to chip at and sell off some of our precious assets.

The monarch has a number of privately owned properties that are not part of the Crown Estates - Balmoral, Sandringham, being the main big ones. I believe Charles also owns some properties in Romania. So those would go with the monarch at the time in the case of a republic. Although they’d have to create a fancy and complicated trust situation to mitigate the tax once they’d lose the monarch to monarch inheritance tax advantage. They’ll probably do something similar to the Duke of Westminster’s situation.

Right now a lot of the Crown Estate properties are rented out to non royals - you can even rent apartments in St James’ Palace - I believe Catherine Zeta Jones has one there.

I am going to lower the tone here so do scroll past but, looking at the photograph of William on CathyorClaire 's link reminded me , with his beard , I do think William has a look of Gareth Southgate. (& I'm not saying that's a bad thing )

😊

I do wonder if the Royal Family would like it to end, they certainly have enough money to totter off into the sunset

Althougj who would want to go down in history as the royal then ended the monarch?

Anyone can take a government to court. You could launch a case against the UK government. It does not make you part of the Royal family.

Well according to JoyousGreyOrca the rf 's intertwining with Christianity is a problem as the general population moves away from religion, so William's struggles with Christianity may prove a plus point and make him more relatable. Him observing his obligation is surely not something to criticise - I'm sure we're all obligated to act in ways we sometimes wouldn't if given the choice.

Oh @JoyousGreyOrca that's the flimsiest excuse I've seen!
Yes I could take the Government to court but they wouldn't allow the average person on the street to apeal a perfectly acceptable judgement!
And who said that taking anything to court would make them apart of the royal family? 🤷‍♀️

Yes maybe alone it will not bring down the monarchy. But if the C of E are disentangled from the state as I think it will eventually be, this will be no more difficult a task constitutionally than doing the same with the Royal family.

I agree OP they will of course end. They are far less favourable with the next generations and hard to justify the cost.

My point is that constitutionally the Royal family are intertwined with the C of E in the apparatus of the state. At some point there will be calls to disentangle the C of E from the state. This will be a challenge for the Royal family to navigate. Please understand I am talking constituonal matters here.

I have not seen any questions I have ignored except ones about what do you think about Harry and Meghan doing blah blah blah. I have ignored those, because frankly it is irrelevant.

Well it wasn't phrased as a question but you asserted more than once that the statement from the late Queen that she wished Camilla to be Queen Consort wasn't released until after her death, implying it may not actually have been her wishes.

I am another poster called smilesy confirmed it was not after her death but in February 2022 in a speech she read out herself.

That is what was mentioned a couple of hours ago and left hanging as you haven't acknowledged your error on that.

@DappledThings I got the timing wrong.

Thank you. That's a bit of a fudge though. You not only got the timing wrong in that you had the wrong month but you also implied that because it was after her death that it might have been Charles making it up. So not quite as simple an error as "I got the timing wrong".

@DappledThings I still am not convinced Queen Elizabeth actually agreed to it, or agreed to it only under intense pressure. Not that it matters to the post at all.

I notice you were silent about the extremely nasty personal comments made to me that left me shaken.

I've not read the whole thread in detail, only skimmed through to see if you'd responded to my pointing out your error. So I don't know what comments those are.

Not that would be anything to do with me or anything I would feel required to comment on even if I did see them.

.

Just the ticket for me ! @IAmATorturedPoet 😀